"Yes, but maybe like Capa at San Sebastian or Morphy or Willie Angler at New York. The Russians will look like potzers."
"Have you studied the scores of the match between Moon Base and Circum-Terra?"
"Not worth the trouble. The play was feeble. Barely Expert Rating."
Sandra's chief difficulty was that she knew absolutely nothing about the game of chess—a point that she had slid over in conferring with the powers at the Space Mirror, but that now had begun to weigh on her. How wonderful it would be, she dreamed, to walk out this minute, find a quiet bar and get pie-eyed in an evil, ladylike way.
"Perhaps mademoiselle would welcome a drink?"
"You're durn tootin' she would!" Sandra replied in a rush, and then looked down apprehensively at the person who had read her thoughts.
It was a small sprightly elderly man who looked like a somewhat thinned down Peter Lorre—there was that same impression of the happy Slavic elf. What was left of his white hair was cut very short, making a silvery nap. His pince-nez had quite thick lenses. But in sharp contrast to the somberly clad men around them, he was wearing a pearl-gray suit of almost exactly the same shade as Sandra's—a circumstance that created for her the illusion that they were fellow conspirators.